England and the Free Cinema Movement
The British Free Cinema movement, which devel-
oped between 1956 and 1959, like the work of Dziga
Vertov and the Italian Neorealists, rejected prevail-
ing cinematic conventions; in so doing, they also
rejected a cinema and obstinately class-bound soci-
ety, turned their cameras on ordinary people and
everyday life, and proclaimed their freedom to
make films without worrying about the demands of
producers and distributors or other commercial
considerations. Because the films of the Free Cin-
ema movement were entirely the expression of the
people who made them, they serve as another man-
ifestation of the growing postwar movement in
Europe toward a new cinema of social realism. Its
primary effect was a small but impressive body of
documentary films, including Lindsay Anderson’s
Every Day Except Christmas(1957), an affectionate
look at the people who make the Covent Garden
market such a tradition; Karel Reisz’s We Are the
Lambeth Boys(1958), an attempt to understand
working-class youth; and Tony Richardson and
Karel Reisz’s Momma Don’t Allow(1955), an admir-
ing view of the emerging British pop culture in the
mid-1950s. After the war, the British class system
began its slow disintegration, and Anderson under-
stood the inherent challenges facing the country as
well as the role that movies might play in the tran-
sition, when he defined his approach to filmmaking:
“I want to make people—ordinary people, not just
Top People—feel their dignity and their impor-
tance, so that they can act from these principles.
Only on such principles can confident and healthy
action be based.”^12
This sentiment and Free Cinema movies helped
to inspire the British New Cinema of the 1960s, an
almost unique situation in which the documentary
form was the catalyst for a revived spirit in narra-
tive filmmaking. Memorable socialist-realist films
were outspoken on the subjects of gender, race, and
economic disparities among the classes, including
Jack Clayton’s Room at the Top(1959), Karel Reisz’s
Saturday Night and Sunday Morning(1960), Basil
Dearden’s Victim (1961), Tony Richardson’s The
Loneliness of the Long Distance Runner(1962), Lind-
say Anderson’s if.... (1968), Joseph Losey’s The
Servant(1963), Richard Lester’s A Hard Day’s Night
(1964), and Ken Loach’s Kes(1969).Denmark and the Dogme 95 Movement
Postwar Danish cinema is noted primarily for the
Dogme 95 movement, founded in 1995 by three
directors, including Lars von Trier, the one best
known outside Denmark. The movement was462 CHAPTER 10FILM HISTORY
(^12) Lindsay Anderson, qtd. in Richard M. Barsam, Nonfiction
Film: A Critical History,rev. and exp. ed. (Bloomington: Indi-
ana University Press, 1992), p. 252.
Victim: the first major movie about gay rights The
British Free Cinema dealt courageously with controversial
issues of class, race, gender, and sexual orientation. Basil
Dearden’s Victim(1961) was the first commercial British film
to show that homosexuality existed at every level of
contemporary society. At the time, homosexual acts between
consenting adults were illegal in Great Britain, and gays
suffered widespread discrimination and blackmail. In Victim,
Dirk Bogarde gave a moving performance as Melville Farr,
a distinguished lawyer who is exposed by a blackmailing
ring for having had an emotional, but nonsexual, gay affair
before he married. In this image, he sees the photograph
that triggered the blackmail. Outraged by the widespread
injustices against homosexuals, he agrees to help the police
by giving evidence in court, knowing that sensational
newspaper publicity could ruin his career. Bogarde, then
one of England’s major stars, was lauded for his personal
courage in helping to break a social barrier, and Victimwas
instrumental in changing the social and legal climate. In
1967, Great Britain legalized homosexual acts between
consenting adults.